Hey Malc,

I can totally understand the predicament and compromises you are reviewing.
I have used mats inside vivs decades ago (and a year or two ago under a glass viv for supplemental heat), and some backup heat for tubs/rubs.

One concern I heard about mats under substrate is the thermal blocking causing overheating and potential fire?

 

Hey Malc,

I can totally understand the predicament and compromises you are reviewing.
I have used mats inside vivs decades ago (and a year or two ago under a glass viv for supplemental heat), and some backup heat for tubs/rubs.

One concern I heard about mats under substrate is the thermal blocking causing overheating and potential fire?

Yeah, that is a concern. I may have just been lucky in the past. Its strange that I'm typing this reply on my thread about running the heating, yet at this moment none of the stats are actually running as the temperature in the Viv has maxed out - the room temp is 30.5c (same as outside !!)

 

More likely with the mats you were sufficiently vigilant to avoid it getting overheated.

Yeah, my Hillstream aquarium is not ‘temperate’ at the moment, and my Corns can’t be enjoying the heat.

 

Malc are your snakes in a separate snake room or a communal living area?

 

They are in individual vivarium's around the house. Four in the lounge, three in the back bedroom, and two belonging to my daughter kept in vivs in her room. So sadly not in a position just heat one room and place them in that, which is where I suspect you were going?

@Elly66 funny enough, at times yesterday evening the controller indicated that the air temp in the four royals vivs, bairds viv and my boa's viv matched / exceeded the set temperature and had shut off the power to the heaters ! - and today is forecast to be warmer !

I've opted to switch over the bank of four vivs in the lounge, and the bank of three in the back room to mats for the time being. Two of the vivs upstairs already have 20w mats in them, so I only needed to order five 20w mats last night. I was quite shocked with the prices, but after a bit of shopping around found a stockist retailing 20w (28 x 42 cm) mats with free shipping at a reasonable price - saving around £25 on the total order. I've received the despatch notification so they should be here early next week. I'll let you know how I get on. The ceramics will stay in place, just not connected for now.

 

I had to smile at this thread - yesterday I had to turn off my corn snakes lamp (uva/uvb mercury which provides heat as well)and even the uva/uvb bulb in my Royals viv (still has ceramic heater on thermostat).

 

Hi Malc,

This reply won't be popular, as it doesn't fit with the current "fashion " of keeping, but this it what l do - and l found it suits my snakes ( all corn snakes ) very much, and gives them the most choice.

I live in quite on old, cold house, where heat mats on their own just wouldn't be enough. My snakes are in 4 foot wooden vivs, and I use combination of both heat mats, and 50 W Arcadia UV A flood lights ( these bulbs are brilliant for giving you a hot spot, while also rising the background temperature ) - bulbs are on Evo light dimming stats, with 4 different temperature settings throughout day( warmest at noon ).

The mats are on 24/7, on pulse stat. The lights are set to only about 6h during winter ( with complete 6 weeks break with no lights mid winter ) and 10 h during summer. During spring and autumn I change the length of the time bulns are on every week, to lenghten or shorten days.

All of the snakes most certainly use the mats, but only some use the basking lights. Only 2 bask directly, the other 5 indirectly by being in a hide near light, or on bench to the side of light.
The vivs are in stacks of 2, and all of the snakes on 2nd floor vivs love to use the belly heat from the bulb in vivs below.

The heat mats are fixed to the bottom of wooden vivs, with pulse stats probe held down in place by light resin hide ( l carve a little grove in side of hide for the probe ). I only put a sprinkling of bedding on top.

I have recently - before the heatwave - spent time observing how much the snakes use the various heat sources, and what temperature they prefere to keep themselves in. They certainly do use the heat mats, especially after feeding, and some ( the shy ones ) use heatmats for about 80% of their heat needs ( l mean when they want to use heat ) despite having access to basking under cover, too. Surprisingly, the snakes mostly seem to want to be at around 24-25 c - l always read that 28C is their optimal functioning temperature! They use mats, or bask after feeding, at around 28 C. They have warmer spot 30-32 C directly under the bulb, but I have only seen 2 of the boys using that.

Advantages of using heatmats as well as lights: snakes have access to warm area 24/7 ( and they certainly do take advantage of this ) and not just at 1 temperature level. By sitting on top of the hide on the mat, they can sit at about 24 C rather than 28 C in hide, which they sometimes do. By using the mats, l don't have to keep the lights on as long as I would have to, if the lights were the only source of heat, especially in autumn, winter and spring - handy these days for saving electricity, without depriving the snakes of heat.

Disadvantages: as they are fixed to the bottom, l'm having to check that the snakes haven't piled lots of bedding on top of the mat, thus creating a possible hot spot/ fire risk. To be honest, this only happens very rarely, sometimes during mating season when the males are super active.

If we go away, l always switch the mats off, and just leave the lights, to be on safe side.

I also regularly check the mats by running the infra red thermometer over them, to check they are not developing hots spots anywhere ( as some mats are 10 years + old !) - so far so good ( fingers crossed ).

I'm planning to hopefully eradicate this problem with mats in future- l'm thinking about creating either a hide, or a partial false bottom, with the mats in a ceiling ( perhaps attached to glass ceiling and stat probe fixed ), and so away from any bedding. If the hide had sloping sides, this could also create different temperature levels even within the hide.

On the whole, during the day, my snakes have a choice of many different basking sites and temperatures, either directly under bulb, in various hides to the side and in between, or on heatmats. During night, they always have the mats, or secondary warmish spots on top of hides, or under Cork bark to the side of mat ( warmer air from mat, but not on top of mat itself ) .

As the snakes choose to use the mats, in some cases even when other heat sources and places are available, and over night, I'm certainly keeping the mats in for them.

Hope this ( overlong ) post helped at least a bit.

 

I think my only qualm with heat mats was worrying about the snake urinating over the electrical connection or water spilling over were the wire joined the mat

I simply covered the electrical ‘joint’ area with loads of hot glue and had zero problems


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

@MrsTim Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed post. However you state that you keep Corns, and thus being from a temperate climate can tolerate cooler air temps, making the use of mats very suitable for that species. I more or less keep my Bairds Rat snake in a similar setup.

The concern I have is, as Ian14 has often pointed out, heat mats don't warm the air, so for a tropical species like Royals where in the normal habitat the air temp typically stays above 25C, exposing them to ambient air temps of 18-20c could lead to health issues such as RI. However as mentioned I kept a royal this way for decades without issues, although the ambient temperature was a tad higher !

Anyway, the order has been shipped so once delivered I'll start the installation and see how thing s progress. If need be I could always wire the mats up in pairs and use the last two channels of my thermostat controller to run them and have the ceramics set to maintain 25c over night, with the mats in use 24/7 to provide the hot spot. Granted it won't save as much money as not using the CHEs, but it will have cut their consumption down considerably.

 

You're right Malc, of course. l'm only using this method for temperate zone snakes, wouldn't work for pythons or boas, certainly not in our house.

There's another thing to take into consideration, apart from the air temperature. Any heavier bodied snake can cause a thermal blocking, even on stated mat, if it sits directly on top of it ( still you probably already know that ). Maybe mounting the mat on the glass mat holder, which is slightly raised, would allow the hot air escape underneath, though l've never used those myself. The thin layer of bedding could work as well, the only problem is that my snakes tend to push any bedding off the mat, anyway.

Mats do heat up the air within the hide that sits on top of them, but that' s about it. Although, before I used bulbs, l managed to raise the air temperature on warm side by adding a second heatmat on the wall on the warm side, but only by a few degrees, and that was only in 15 inch high viv.

I think your idea of running the ceramics as a back up could work, would be interested to hear the results.

I was seriously thinking about solar panels, as a back up/ add on, to save on electricity, but this would be massively expensive l guess.

 

I was seriously thinking about solar panels, as a back up/ add on, to save on electricity, but this would be massively expensive l guess.

It's not so much the panels that are expensive, it's all the invertors and control gear that is needed to mange the supply, plus any storage battery (like the Teslar systems) to allow you to use the "spare" energy at night

Switching to mats has cost me around £65, so far for 5 new mats. I still need a couple more (for my daughters Royals, but she's considering paying for the 'lecy the CHEs use, so may not need the additional 2 mats), so that investment should be recouped in a month of their use based on the rough calculations above... From what I've read, most solar panel installations start to pay for them selves after 10-12 years... by which time the solar array technology has advanced to make more efficient panels and the old ones need replacing !

 

Reading all this with great interest as currently awaiting delivery of a bigger viv for my Royal. Currently using ceramic and a low heat uva/ uvb bulb ( bulb off at night). The current viv is 3 x 2 x 2, but new one is 5ft long and 3ft high and nearly 3ft deep. I've been thinking of buying a heat panel and will still have a uva/uvb bulb. Hoping a heat panel won't be to expensive to run.

As I'm only currently running 2 vivs, it's not a huge problem and at the most, I'll only be running 3. Imagine those like yourself @Malc, with many vivs are frantically trying to cut costs though.

 

I've been thinking of buying a heat panel and will still have a uva/uvb bulb. Hoping a heat panel won't be to expensive to run.

To get an approximation, take the wattage of the heat panel, multiply that by 24 and then divide by 2. Then take that figure and multiply it by the Kw/h price you are being charged and then divide that by 100 to get £.p Do the same for the UV and add the two totals together to get an estimate / approximation. The only true way to discover the consumption would be to use a plug in watt meter. These measure the actual consumption and some even allow you to enter the cost per Kw/h and tell you in real terms what your paying.

 

See this is the thing. These mats are designed to produce the long wave IR so the snake warms up much the same way as the sun's IR would be absorbed. The instructions state that they should be placed on the side / back or roof of the enclosure. The only time the instructions mention placing them underneath is for use with glass tanks. I can't recall how / why we started to place them on the inside of the viv under the substrate.

Yes thermal blocking is an issue with heavy bodied snakes, so careful placement of the probe is needed. It will certainly need some experimentation to come up with a workable solution. @Elly66 there are several members who have far more enclosures than I have, and are using CHE's or 100w spots, who must also be feeling the squeeze with the rising electricity costs. I'm running 1150w (1.15KW) of ceramics all on pulse stats. So a rough estimate its around 13 / 14 Kw per day or 96Kw per week, based on ( (1150w x 24) /2) *7 assuming the heaters are on for 50% of the time. Using the current BG tariff of 27.84p/ kwh that gives me a running cost of £26.72 per week, (£1390 pa) just to run the vivs. When converted to mats and a single CHE the consumption should be ((330w x 24)/2)*7 = 27.7Kw/h which should cost around £7.71 per week to run, a saving of £19.01 pw or £988 a year. This is at the current rate set in April, I could be looking at double that by January if the media are to be believed.

I'm not going to go into to too much detail, but I'm on low a fixed income, and have been for a few years. In that time I've managed to remain on track and not be in arrears with any payments, including the mortgage. It's been tight but doable. However with the hike in energy costs, making savings where I can should mean I have a chance I might actually get through this silly period of extortionate energy costs without having to sell off my pets, or run up so much debt that it would take me a decade to repay it (or starve as it leaves no money for food !!). This is not a sob story, there are people worse off than me, and I appreciate the assistance the government have offered, all of which I have used to make additional payment on the electric which is my highest energy bill. It's really to highlight the options and compromises we have to make. Granted there will be those people who's financial situation is such that trebling or quadrupling of their energy bills is of no concern, but for the most of us its a very serious matter.

Anyway, I'll keep you all posted as this "experiment" continues.

 

These are certainly worrying times: my electricity cost during the summer is about 120 per month and that's before the next price cap increase and of course the winter months with the need for more heat and light. My biggest expense is an arboreal viv with a tropical species needing 31-32 degree heat during the day and 25-26 at night, a 250w ceramic plus 50w halogen basking do the job easily but I calculate it accounts for about 1/10 of my bill on its own.
It may ultimately be that this energy cost increase will cause a decrease in captive tropical species in temperate countries and perhaps in increase (proportionally) of temperate species. Certainly it's put my plans to acquire a Uromastyx on hold indefinitely.
My experience with heat mats hasn't been all that successful - due to low ambient room temps I had trouble with feeding and had concerns about respiratory infections too.

 

I personally feel that this energy crisis will have a devastating effect on the hobby / business. On one side you will see people trying to sell off their collections into an already crowded market. If that don't work (mainly as not a lot of people are going to be in the same boat) then rescue centres will be inundated (of not already) with request to rehome re reptiles. With most centres already closing their doors as they are full and again affected by the same energy costs as the rest of us, then we're going to see more and more reports of dumped snakes and lizards.

Shops will also be affected, not just by the increased costs to run the business, and thus pushing up the price of the goods and livestock they sell, but they are far less likely to take on any surplus stock form private breeders, so anyone with lots of hatchlings will be stuck with them and thus we've gone full circle.

I've got an idea on how I'm going to use these mats, and will probably update this thread as and when with any findings. I'll take some meter readings once this hot weather has broken so that the stats are driving the heaters under "normal" conditions, and then do the same once all the vivs have been switched over. Then it's just a case of monitoring the snakes for changes in their behaviour and feeding patterns. Like Nick, my main concern is the risk of RI's. The only CHE that I will be running is the 150w trough in the Boa's viv... a heat mat for such a large snake just won't cut it !

 

Malc, l have already noticed this recently. Just checking various selling sites, there are already few reptiles where prices have suddenly dropped/ for free, and lots of beardies and tortoises are suddenly for sale...

Also, in my local shop, pice of an even basic morph corn snakes is almost £100, due to whole sale price and overheads...

 

Malc, l have already noticed this recently. Just checking various selling sites, there are already few reptiles where prices have suddenly dropped/ for free, and lots of beardies and tortoises are suddenly for sale...

Just look at the classified section on here, so many first time posters looking to rehome anything from a corn snake to a retic !

 

I've received my order of 5x 20w heat mats. Seems these are non branded (similar to Swells) which may explain why they are £10 cheaper than Ultratherms. However I plugged one in to the mains and did some testing. After an hour or so it was warm to the touch, between 38 - 42c surface temperature. But I also did an experiment. We've often read the statement that mats do not heat the air. So I placed a digital thermometer that has its sensor behind a couple of openings in the top of its case, approx 6cm from the heat mat. I reset the memory and let it sit there for half an hour / forty minutes to stabilise to get the base reading, and then turned the mat on. After an hour the temperature recorded rose from 27.6 to 31.7c. So we've been spouting incorrect information all these years.... Well no... 6cm is hardly practical, and at a practical distance the air wasn't warmed by any noticeable amount.

Right, time to take some meter readings and then look at fitting these mats this coming weekend. I won't see the full benefit as I will still have three vivs on 150w CHE's until I order some more mats, but this should reduce the wattage from 1150w to 440w, but that's still a saving.

 

Just spent the past couple of hours swapping the three viv unit over form CHE to mats. The bottom and middle viv already had 28w ultratherm mats as originally I was keeping my female Bairds rat snake in the middle one, and the bottom was going to be for a male that I never ended up getting. So now I have replaced 350w of CHE and heat panel with 76w of heat mats. Each mat has the probe from the thermostat fixed to it via aluminium foil tape, and now it's a matter of dialling in the thermostats over the next few hours to get a nice sweet 32-34c substrate temperature. and then I'll monitor for a few days to see how well the snakes do before switching the main bank of four vivs over. I also need that time to rest my back (hopefully I'll hear news of when I can have my MRI to see what's going on... my right leg is totally numb at the moment as a result of the pain in my lower back !!) and it's this that is also not helping - that 4 way unit weighs a fair bit !!

On a side note, between Wednesday and last evening I monitored the electricity consumption. With the all but one viv on CHEs, TV, Fridge, Freezer, computer and lights (no washing machines, hairdryers etc) we consumed 18.7wats. At todays rate of 28p a Kw/h that's £4.86. Doing a rough calculation based on a 50:50 pulse cycle duty the consumption for the vivs alone would be £3.93, with the other 93p being the PC (on for most of the day), TV etc. Granted it's not a precise calculation, and there is a fair bit of assumption that in a 24 hour period the heaters average out at a 50:50 cycle... but it's something to go on when I do a comparison once all the enclosures are switched over.

I've also placed the digital thermometer / hydrometer in with one of the snakes. This will tell me what the conditions are like 2" above the substrate (and lets face it other than climbing, most snakes nostrils will be in this range). This will give me some indication as to how much the mats warm the air just above the surface.

 

between Wednesday and last evening I monitored the electricity consumption. With the all but one viv on CHEs, TV, Fridge, Freezer, computer and lights (no washing machines, hairdryers etc) we consumed 18.7wats. At todays rate of 28p a Kw/h that's £4.86. Doing a rough calculation based on a 50:50 pulse cycle duty the consumption for the vivs alone would be £3.93, with the other 93p being the PC (on for most of the day), TV etc. Granted it's not a precise calculation, and there is a fair bit of assumption that in a 24 hour period the heaters average out at a 50:50 cycle... but it's something to go on when I do a comparison once all the enclosures are switched over

Well I wasn't far off... we just submitted meter readings (trying to beat the rush before the website crashes like last April) and received our bills. Over the 125 day period since my last submission our consumption averaged £4.67 (exc standing charge and VAT), so using the washing machine and maybe the odd tumble in the dryer etc cost me around 20p a day averaged over that period.

Now I know it won't be a like for like comparison as the next three months will see longer nights, so lights will be used more, and if the central heating is run there's the impact the pump might have, but hopefully swapping over to mats will basically cover the difference between the current 28p / Kwh and the predicted 54p / Kwh from October 1st

 

Hope that it works for you. As the room with my vivariums in is unheated and not in the main part of the house, I wouldn't be able to do your method as the ambient daytime temperatures get too low in winter, but for somewhere with a room temperature in the low 20s C I can see that you may have success, at least with the more temperate species.

 

Nick, I've left the CHEs in place so it can be converted back in an afternoon if needed. As I said I'm going to see how they behave. If I notice any symptoms of RIs or they go on hunger strike etc then I will look at swapping them back to using CHE's. The snakes in the house are split over three rooms. Four royals, my boa and my Bairds rat snake are in the lounge, three royals in the small bedroom and my youngest daughter has her tow royals in her room. In a cold winter most rooms drop to 18-19c in the small hours so whilst the mats seem to be keeping the air just above the mat around 31c the rest will be at ambient room temp...

 

I am interested in what your outcome of this is. Looking at the 350w CHE in my boa's ~7' x 3' x 2' viv, it's pretty much never about 50% power draw. This provides the amibiant head for the hold vivarium so does the bulk of the heating, a DHP does the heat spot.

Granted, I don't have these stats for winter yet, butthe room she is in is north facing and sits around 18-20 degrees most days.

 

Stu, that's some nice data you have there. If I read that right, the temperature swing is from 25c to 32c in a 24 hr period, presumably you have a night time drop of 7c ?

I stated 50% as it's based on how long the LED is on for each pulse of the duty cycle... I can't see how a pulse stat can have a draw that's less than 5% power, unless that figure is relating to how much of the duty cycle is being utilised for each pulse ? I was always under the impression a pulse stat gave 100% power for whatever duration. So I read your data as being 100% power for 4% of the duty cycle suggesting the heater is very efficient. I really should get one of those in-line power meter that you plug in between the outlet and whatever you want to measure... that would give me a true ideal of the consumption, save guesswork

However, whilst I am prepared to run the royals on mats, I would not be doing that for my boa. He's still having his 150w trough ceramic to keep him warm.

 

Well the mats have been running 24 hrs now, and I've dialled in the stats so the thin later of substrate is 31c - 33c . In fact the three snakes have move part of the substrate off so they sit on the mat. The thermometer recorded an overnight low of 27.6c about 2" above the heat mat in the middle viv, and I have a program drop of 3c so that wasn't to bad.

What I have noticed is there has been more thermoregulation going on. I've popped up four or five times today and noticed each snake being on the mat and off the mat more than when the CHEs were employed... even my big normal female who loves the warmth and would get as close to the CHE as possible was found at the cool side this afternoon. Thinking it may be a case the mats are too hot I checked the hot sides using the IR laser thermometer and over the area it didn't exceed 33.8c which was on an uncovered are of the mat.

Still early days. My weather station shows that the lounge didn't drop below 23c last night, so the bedrooms could well have been a round 24-25c so we've yet to see what impact a cool night has. But based on what I'm seeing I might convert the remaining 6 vivs over in a couple of weeks time. It was also feeding night, and all apart from one royal that is in blue fed without issue, so the change in how the vivs are heated hasn't upset their appetite.

 

To get a true idea of consumption I took delivery of a plug in meter. This measures voltage, amperage flowing, and watts being drawn in realtime. It then has a function to display the KW/h over time. I currently (no punn intended) have it monitoring the six vivs in the lounge the the controller is running. The total wattage rating of the five ceramic heaters and a single mat is 620w. It's only been running an hour and I will report back this time tomorrow with the data... Due to the nature of the pluses the max registered watts has been 242w, so either the power factor is coming into play, or the CHE's are more efficient, requiring less electricity to maintain, what is for them a low temperature.

I'll also repeat the test on the stack of three vivs that are now running 76w of heat mats later on in the week

 

Interesting... now the daytime temps are set the use has crept up - max wats drawn 598.8w which is close to the 620w going by the ratings on the products. Setting the cost per Kw/h to the 28p British gas are currently charging just these units have consumed 70p in the past 14 hours having consumed 2.478 Kw/h... Be interesting to see how much impact the lights make when they come on at 2pm

 

All the little things certainly add up too: I've shortened my hours of lighting in most vivs by 2-3 hours a day, multiplied by several T5 lamps that's not insignificant.

 

Well it shows that My calculations were off, and allowing a 50:50 (ie dividing the load in half ) was way off. In the past 24 Hours the consumption for 1x 150w trough CHE + 1x 150w White Python compact CHE, 3x 100w White python compact CHEs, and a single 20w mat, a total of 620w was 4.481Kw/h. At British Gas's current rate of 28p/Kwh that equates to £1.25. Prior to converting the three vivs upstairs I had 4x 150w trough Ceramic and a 50w power plate, so again 650w. So my revised figure for running the vivs is £2.50 per day. I dare say someone could work out the efficiencies of my thermostats or heaters, but for now using these figures that equates to £17.55 per week, £76.04pm

Now to swap put the CHE's for mats and re-run the same test.

 

Interesting. Does that figure include lighting, as with my digital thermostats I have lighting on the second timed socket? For example my skink has a T5 at 39 watts for 12 hours a day.

It does show how if we actually do get the predicted unit price of around £1 per kWh by next April, it could spell big trouble for many - that would triple to quadruple the above amount. Fingers crossed the government actually create an artificial cap on prices for the time being.

 

Yes Nick, it's the total draw (my controller does the lights as well). Now it may be that the sample rate of the meter is slow and as such isn't getting a true figure. For example if the sample rate was every second, and the pulse rate was less, then it would miss read the values. Mind you, looking at the code I wrote for the controller, it pulses at 1 second intervals so the readings should be true.

Well whatever the government do we'll end up paying for it in years to come - nothing is free ! But yes, they need to do something as a lot of people are struggling now, let alone come January. For me, whilst it may not be ideal, fitting mats is a compromise. It's (hopefully) going to reduce costs, but also allows me to keep the snakes.

Last night I plugged the bank of three vivs that I changed to mats (2x 28w and 1 x 20w) and in the past 12 hours it's registering 0.335 Kw/h total consumption. If it continues like that then its quite a saving